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With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of four men--Montagu Norman, Amile Moreau, Hjalmar Schacht, and Benjamin Strong--whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century.
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Subjects
Biography, Capitalists and financiers, Bankers, Business, Nonfiction, nyt:hardcover-nonfiction=2009-03-08, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, Strong, benjamin, 1872-1928, Banks and banking, central, Economic history, 1918-1945, Depressions, 1929, Financial crises, De Crisis, Financiële aspecten, Centrale bankenShowing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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Lords of finance: the bankers who broke the world
2009, Penguin Press
in English
159420182X 9781594201820
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Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
2009, Penguin
Paperback
in English
0143116800 9780143116806
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Lords of finance: the bankers who broke the world
2009, Penguin Press
in English
159420182X 9781594201820
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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Lords of finance: the bankers who broke the world
2009, Penguin Press
in English
159420182X 9781594201820
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Libraries near you:
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Book Details
First Sentence
"On August 15, 1931, the following press statement was issued: The governor of the Bank of England has been indisposed as a result of the exceptional strain to which he has been subjected in the recent months."
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [533]-544) and index.
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With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth centuryIt is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.In Lords of Finance, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose facade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation— and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard.For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world's currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression.As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.
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- Created February 18, 2009
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August 19, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
February 25, 2010 | Edited by 71.172.231.46 | added first sentence |
February 18, 2009 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from San Francisco Public Library record |